Some teachers counsel against all sex. Beinsa Douno did not believe in sex: “Love,” he wrote, “without falling in love” and “Stay at a distance so as not to see each other’s flaws. While people stay away from each other they only see their positive sides. When they get too close they cannot stand each other.” This is pretty good practical advice most of the time, but not all masters agree on sex. One of the prophet’s students, Omraam Mikhael Aivanhov, taught that the sexual act, Tantric, could be a path to higher wisdom. I taught Anton how to breathe and slow down and lose ego. Anton and I blissed out, really blissed out totally for a couple of weeks on this yoga mat in the studio. He got much happier; his aura went really blue with some touches of purple, and when he worked on the art, he was smooth and humming on a low note that just kept going. We talked a lot about the grasping self and how to transcend it, and we went on a ten-day wheat bulgur fast to tone up our nervous systems. The prophet prescribed it. You begin just after the full moon and end just before the new moon. All you eat for meals is the wheat with hot water, walnuts, and some honey if you want to sweeten it up. You can eat apples between meals. After you’ve had the apple, you must turn to it and say, “Thank you, apple.” Then you bury the core and the seeds. We had to go outside to do it. We’d pick up the cigarette butts and cans and condoms and clear a nice spot for the little burial. While you’re fasting, you’re not supposed to think any negative thoughts, so when we were picking up the garbage, I’d concentrate on stars and clover and clear pools. It really works. In fact, it’s pretty amazing. No sex during the fast. We felt really pure and white and clean as fresh snow and new moons.
During the fast, Anton said that he could feel how nothing matters personally, how the personal is the wrong path. Mine and yours are equal. Mine and yours are the same. We don’t really own anything in this life, and nobody owns art either. Making art shouldn’t be about names or about selling; it should lead you somewhere better on your path to higher understanding. He said Harry knew that, that she didn’t want anything for herself. She was unselfish. She’s like another mother to me, he said. I didn’t tell Anton that Harry was awfully red for a totally unselfish person, because I knew he had to find his own way. On the last day of the fast, we ate potato soup, and Anton started crying, not loud crying or anything, just tears dripping down his face. I remember that really well. I was in the lotus position, and he was in half lotus, face to face, and his shirt was unbuttoned so I could see the little curls on his chest, just a few light brown hairs, almost like an angel’s, really. The archangel Raphael is the angel for healing and wholeness and unity, so I called to the angel in my mind. Sadness, Anton, I said, is because of self-grasping. We are all looking for things to satisfy this sense of want that we feel would satisfy our needs. We all know that the next want will appear, and we will chase that and so on, but when we recognize it and put it on the shelf, we can move beyond it. And he felt better, and then after the soup, we went higher than ever before into the non-self upper reaches of Tantric truths.
We all saw it happening. Steve, Edgar, and I knew when that lady walked in, the one from the gallery — I can’t remember her name — but it doesn’t matter; she had a greedy face with money in it and lots of blockage in her, and Anton was very nervous. He could hardly breathe. And then it was bad to worse. Harry came in a lot, and she had this certain look. I mean, her eyes could do damage to you. She was quiet, really quiet, and stiff like she had just gotten extra starch at the dry cleaners. Anton was calling her Fairy Godmother, and then Edgar started doing it. I’m Cinderella. That’s what Anton said, but he was so keyed up, it wasn’t funny, if you know what I mean. The bad karma was building and building. So noisy! I had to meditate a lot. I had to cleanse my aura all the time. Auras are like magnets. They pick up all kinds of crap, and mine was getting mucky from the vibrations and negative energies. I was running my hands through my hair all the time and washing up, washing up. Sometimes I’d go outside and walk and let the wind from the water blow over me and clean me. I liked to walk by the water taxis and peek into the warehouse buildings and check out the Statue of Liberty from different angles. She looks so strong and centered. She always makes me feel better.
Then the show happened. Anton’s mom and dad came, which seemed really nice to me, and they were really nice people, too. I talked to them for a while, and his dad said, “We’re very proud.” But Anton freaked. He was drinking red wine and getting drunk. His spleen chakra was completely shut down. Harry wasn’t there. He kept saying, “I thought she’d come even though she said she wouldn’t. I can’t believe she isn’t here.” He was slurring words. He bumped against the wall. The crowd of people were screeching and laughing; their sounds made me really sore in my arms and legs, as if they were beating on me with their energy — bang, bang, bang. I had to run out of there. So I went home and lit a candle and meditated for a while, and then I called my mom, and we talked for about an hour. She was in a good place then, and her voice was like a healing song.
But it didn’t really get better with Anton. People were coming to talk to him in the studio. Tell us this and that, and oh, Anton, what were you thinking when you made the big nude? And blah, blah, blah, but the rest of us weren’t really doing anything there. Still, we were paid. Harry and Anton whispered together, lots of low conspiracy-type whispering. Harry read the reviews to all of us, laughing really loud, her eyes all glassy with tears. She thought it was so funny, but that didn’t make any sense. I could feel her from way across the room. Meanwhile, Anton got slicker and slicker. He talked different, walked different. His vibes went completely weird. He bought these really expensive shiny boots and some Japanese shirts, and he seemed to think they were going to protect him from what was going on with his inner being, which was shriveling up like a hard little peanut. I did a lot of breathing, a lot of aura cleaning, and I hoped things would change.
One day Harry came in while I was there. She seemed sunken, low-energy. I asked her if she was okay, and she looked at me for the first time. I mean actually looked at me. She smiled, and her face wrinkled up, and I realized she was pretty old. I told her I had used abalone shells on people to clear their hearts of sorrow, that they were very good for soothing and working through emotions, that they might help her. She patted my shoulder but didn’t say anything. She talked to Anton for a while. Then they were fighting, and he shouted at her, “This is my life!” Before she left, she came over and talked to me. She asked me about where I grew up and how I got my name. I told her my mother named me after a clematis because her mom, my grandma Lucy, loved the vine more than any other flowers. She seemed to like that. I told her my father didn’t want me. He wouldn’t even sign the birth certificate. It’s funny, I don’t tell everybody that. It depends on their aura, you know, but that day, even though Harry was kind of low on the energy scale, it was okay. I told her about my sensing things most people can’t see or feel. Before she left, she said something I still remember. I can’t say it like she did, but she told me that people have different names for the same things, depending on what interests they have, but the words can also change how we see the things. I don’t really get the last part, but I can understand why Anton thought Harry was wise. That day she seemed wise, and when she touched my hand, I felt warm sweet energies coming from her.